


Inheritance

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name means “God is gracious.”</p>
<p>Given that it’s the female analog of the name of the man who got your father killed, you kind of doubt it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inheritance

Your daddy dies when you’re still in pigtails.

You're terrified for a while, not exactly irrationally, that whatever monster got him is going to come for you next. You spend a lot of time awake and inconsolable, spend so much time in the terrifying quiet that you know you’d sneak some alcohol if your mom wasn't so damn good at keeping guard.

Eventually, though, the feelings start to numb all on their own. You realize, hazily, you're getting over it. Getting over him being gone.

It’s much longer, though, before you truly stop being afraid.

This is how long it takes: exactly as many days as it takes you to learn to make silver bullets and salt rounds, how to shoot and stab and fight, how to paint devil's traps and make holy water; exactly as many years as it takes you to be even better than your dad.

\--

Your name means “God is gracious.”

Given that it’s the female analog of the name of the man who got your father killed, you kind of doubt it.

You pull out your pigtails and chop off your name, grind it down to a single syllable, something too short and clipped to mean anything, something too small and insignificant to hurt when people throw it at you.

\--

You're nervous your first day of high school.

Ridiculous, you think. Monsters exist. Why the hell should you be anxious about teenagers?

But you are anyway, so you're twirling your butterfly knife, force of habit, means of distraction. When a voice behind you says, “What a pretty little thing,” you respond, “Thanks, it was a gift from my dad.”

Up until this moment, it didn't occur to you that anyone would dare speak to you as though you're an object.

You watch his face shift from shock and fear to disgust in an instant, and he sneers as he calls you “a freak with a knife collection.” His friends laugh their agreement.

Every interaction is like that, immediate attention followed by sudden dismissal when you smile too slowly, when you hold yourself too confidently, when you fail to play out whatever script it is they’re expecting.

You give up on your delusions of normality. It doesn’t even take a full day.

\--

You let go of your textbooks and hold onto your knives.

With every hunt you train yourself a little more. You allow yourself a small amount of blind panic, a few tears, and then you truncate it ruthlessly and jump back into action. You’re getting good at it, this denial of weakness, this insistence on action. You indulge your shortcomings less and less every time.

You're pretty sure that eventually, it won't happen at all.

\--

You’ve felt like you were dying before, but this time it’s a bit more literal.

It’s not fair, you think; not because it’s happening to you, necessarily, but because your mom is going to have to watch. At least with your dad, all she got was a body to burn. You wonder if she can already feel you growing cold.

This is what your life will buy: somewhere else, someday else, the kids who feared and envied you in equal measure will walk across a stage or down an aisle, their parents watching with tears in their eyes. They’ll get jobs, the nine-to-five kind that come with steady paychecks and low mortality rates. They’ll buy cars and own houses and take vacations. They’ll have children of their own, hold those tiny new lives in their arms. They’ll check for monsters under beds and in closets, and they won’t do it while holding a weapon.

You lean against your mom, arms wrapped around yourself, holding in your internal organs, and allow yourself a brief moment of pride at this thing you’ve accomplished.

And then you let yourself be scared.

 


End file.
